You can't blame Frankie for wanting to muscle in the old Horse Riding genre, to be honest, there's not much competition, especially on the PS2 - G1 Jockey 4 looks like its only opponent, and let's be honest, G1 Jockey wouldn't take much to beat. It seems as if tweenage girls are going mad for the Horse Riding games these days too, Pippa Funnel has enjoyed loads of success on the Nintendo DS and GBA.

Any graphical worries should be thrown out the window, as Frankie Dettori Racing features real horse motion capture, meaning that the graphics should not only be outstanding, but they'll have an strong element of realism there too. Commentary should feature heavily, which is great news for those who want to hear things other than galloping when they're racing, and with 20 real tracks, a cinematic replay system, eight player multiplayer, and more modes that you can shake a whip at, Frankie Dettori Racing should leave our G1 Jockey 4 in the dust.

Frankie Dettori Racing should be available soon on Xbox, PS2, and the PC if I were you, I'd back this horse, because it really does look like a winner!

See what I did there? I used a horse pun!

The holiday movie season isn't even over, but we're already getting a glimpse at what could be a sleeper hit in theaters and on game consoles when it's released in next month. Arthur and the Invisibles is a live action/animated movie based upon the four-volume book set by acclaimed director Luc Besson (Leon: The Professional, The Fifth Element). The Atari-published games based on the film are set to hit stores around the same time for the PlayStation 2, PSP, PC, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance. In this preview, we'll take look at the lead character, Arthur and see what makes him tick.

As the story goes, Arthur is a 10-year old boy who lives with his grandparents. His grandfather has been missing for a number of years in Africa, which has left the house at the mercy of a greedy land developer who wants to tear the place down. Arthur thinks his grandpa's notes and sketches on a mythical race of tiny creatures called Minimoys (Invisibles in the US) might help their plight, but these artifacts are taken away as antiques dealers strip the attic. Through a twist of fate, Arthur discovers where the Invisibles live in his grandma's garden and he's shrunken down to a tiny size. He soon meets the beautiful Princess Selenia and more Minimoys who happen to request his aid. With two goals now in mind, Arthur and the Invisibles set off in search of a way to save two different worlds.




ARTHUR

Arthur is not a Minimoy by birth, and is constantly discovering aspects of this world around him. Before even meeting her, Arthur was already in love with Princess Selenia, even though he does not completely understand the emotions he feels for the first time. He adopts a knightly and romantic attitude towards her, attempting to impress her whenever the occasion rises, often by risking his life.

ARTHUR'S INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS

Arthur is the only character in the game able to use the following special moves:
1. Free-Climb
His free-climb technique enables Arthur to negotiate ledges on certain vertical faces, and to move by clinging to objects on certain ceilings
2. Liana Swing
The liana is a vine-like fiber that trails from specific ceilings and permits Arthur to swing across huge gaps. Thus, he can use the liana to reach places that are otherwise inaccessible.
3. Pilot Moustik
Moustik piloting enables Arthur to fly a Seide moustik. Mounted, he has the advantage of its great mobility and destructive weaponry
4. Drive Car
These sections permit Arthur to pilot his little racer at great speed. With this skill, he attempts to save his companions from the tidal wave flooding down the tunnel behind them and threatening to overwhelm the Minimoy village


As for the game, it's a third-person action/platformer where you'll need to use the skills of three characters (Arthur, Selenia, Betameche) in order to combat enemies and solve puzzles. Fighting, flying and driving sequences also come into play during the 20+-hour adventure, which is longer than most licensed games tend to be. As for the screenshots, Developer Etranges Libellules (the underrated Asterix & Obelix: Kick Buttix) is showing that the PlayStation 2 isn't quite the dinosaur of the console world. I'll have to admit that I was fooled for a few seconds into thinking these were work-in-progress Xbox 360 or even PS3 shots. Rich color usage and lovingly detailed characters aside, we'll need to see how the gameplay stacks up to the gorgeous graphics.



Etranges is also working on the PSP and PC versions, while getting an assist from Neko on the DS code. The GBA version of Arthur is being handled by Misitc, a developer I've not yet heard of, but one I'll certainly be following as the GBA enters what could be it's last year as a viable platform. Of course, I'll need to bug the folks at Atari for more images on all the games as they all sound like a fantasy fan's dream. Stay tuned for more on Arthur and the Invisibles in the coming weeks.

I think I'll use today's entry to enlighten you all on the problem of unreleased films. Basically, these are the films that never make it to a final retail version, ending their life in dusty film cans lying in the archives of old movie theatres. When my mother asked me to find some of her old favourites for her on the Internet, I, naive as ever, tried a quick search on eBay. No results. Now, as all regular visitors of the auction site know, receiving a blank page with no more options is a freak occurrence, so I pondered a bit about it. I then tried some other sites, and some more, until I finally reached the conclusion that the films had never been commercially released aside from their theatrical debut, even though they had all received high marks on IMDB.

After the initial confusion, I realised that this was actually relatively normal for older films, and even though there might be a market for distributing them, many films are allowed to die quiet deaths. Searching IMDB I found a horde of unreleased films from the birth of the business, several of them having received high rankings. Many were also from prominent directors such as Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Billy Wilder, which makes it increasingly weird that their early projects were never released as a set.

And what would the solution to this horrible dilemma be? I honestly don’t know. The final decision lies with greedy executives for gigantic companies, so the hope that they'll invest money in unsafe projects seems very far-fetched. However, I picked up an idea about a year ago, someone talking about releasing several classic movies on a single disc, with decreased quality. Especially with Blu-Ray and HD DVD starting to dominate the scene, it will be possible to store 8-10 films in quality similar to that of a DVD on just a single disc. While this method of releasing titles might not satisfy diehard fans, it will certainly serve as a good indicator as to which titles might sell well as full-fledged releases. And it would be more than enough for us casual movie fans interested in seeing where it all began.

Continuing the Christmas feature I started yesterday, today I'll talk a bit LucasArts' classic point'n'click series Monkey Island. As most gamers know, particularly those with a salty seadog hidden inside, Monkey Island's main protagonist is Guybrush Threepwood, a pirate wannabe. Throughout the 4 games we followed our naive hero growing from amateur to master at piracy, earn and lose fortunes, marry his true love and battle against his nemesis, the evil ghost pirate LeChuck. Each of his misadventures were filled to the brim with witty humour and cunningly conceived puzzles, earning Monkey Island a reputation as one of the greatest in the genre and the cunning team behind it the masters.

I must admit, I never played Monkey Island up until I tracked down a copy of the third in the series this summer. Even as the intro played, I was completely awe-struck by the amazing humour, style and atmosphere of it all, completely paralysed for the rest of the game. Since then I bought the entire series off the Internet and am now happily playing it through.

The latest, and possibly last, entry in the Monkey Island series was Escape From Monkey Island, which hit the market in 2000, simultaneously appearing on PC and PS2, and since then the adventure game scene has been deathly quiet for LucasArts, former grand masters in the genre. Despite a few attempts at a revival, adventure games are now rarely used as physical releases for popular systems, something greatly lamented by fans. However, as I stated last night, there might be a solution to the dilemma: episodic gaming. The new trend of releasing episodes of games is perfect for experimenting with new ideas and basically for churning out all the things you wouldn't be able to sell in stores.

Telltale Games have already created more adventures for Steve Purcell's crime-fighting duo, Sam & Max, so reviving Guybrush and LeChuck for another adventure of swash-buckling excitement is a very logical step. But until we can celebrate the return of our great idol, there is still plenty of fun to be had in the classic games, so my advice: hunt down the entire series on eBay, arrange a computer in front of your bed and spend your Christmas holidays scouring the Spanish Maine in search of booty, grub and grog.

It's December! The Christmas month sure does seem to sneak up on you out of nowhere, doesn't it? Naturally, those of you aware of your surroundings knew about that a long time ago, but when you're resurfacing after a long stretch of Half-Life 2, it strikes you as a bucket of ice water in the face. And after realising I was late with presents and all other preparations for the great holiday, it struck me that the festivities ought to be felt everywhere, including AceGamez. So, I pitched an idea to everybody for a group feature spanning the days up until Christmas, in which we'd contemplate on whatever we pleased. After receiving no response, editor Geoff encouraged me to start anyway, so that's what I'm doing. I sure hope someone will pick up the thread, or you'll be forced to hear me yak all through December! Anywho, I'll shoot off this series with my take on episodic gaming:

The last 10 years or so, video games have evolved into somewhat of a subdivision of films. Transferring the idea from film to game has become a trivial task for many film studios, often without any real interaction from the creative leader of the project. Of course, this has had two-sided effects, resulting in video games constantly "borrowing" from films, be it specific scenes, stunts, atmospheres or even worlds. And even though the influence has had many positive effects, gamers are on the lookout for new content: we're interested in the streamlined, the fast and easy, rather than huge sagas of gory violence, straight out of a Vin Diesel B-movie. Enter episodic gaming - a new idea set to change the gaming scene.

Of course, episodic gaming is merely the principle of dividing a game into different sections for you to enjoy at your leisure. The concept has been around for ages, as expansion packs for your favourite games (The Sims, anybody?). However, rather than expanding an existing game, the new breed of episodic games will create entirely new adventures, just like reading a 6-issue comic book or following the daily intrigues in a soap opera. This opens up gaming for an entirely new audience - the same audience that downloads another episode of South Park each week.

Valve's Half-Life: Episode 1 and Ritual Entertainment's SiN Episodes series are both trying to establish episodic gaming as a new way of playing games, even though both releases miss the final ingredient - regularly occurring releases. Playing through Mr. Freeman's latest escapade in City 17 is dangerously hampered by the fact that, once through it, you'll have to wait another 6 months for the continuation. This is something that Telltale Games have caught up on with their 2 episodic game series, a game adaptation of Jeff Smith's Bone comics and an episodic revival of LucasArts' classic Sam & Max adventure game, Hit the Road. Both series are released monthly via GameTap's download service, and have generated a quite positive response.

In my opinion, Telltale Games' marketing philosophy is currently the closest to true episodic gaming. Rather than keeping fans drooling 3-4 years while cleaning up bugs and perfecting a full game, you release another episode each month to keep them at bay. However, despite the advantages of releasing games episodically, there is also the disadvantage that each episode must be structured largely story-based, with a beginning, middle and, if only temporary, end. Shooters will generally become too engaging and are more fit for playing long stretches at a time than just a few hours each month. This is why I agree with the skilled folk at Telltale that the media is perfect as a revival for adventure games, something fans of the genre have been praying would come for years.
In all, episodic gaming is an exciting concept, and one we'll have to keep an eye on in the future, especially on consoles. The X-Box Live Marketplace is a perfect place for dealing the episodes and Nintendo have already expressed an interest in releasing the new Sam & Max episodes on the Wii, so it's certainly an exciting new aspect to gaming.